ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I am interested in considering how the phenomena of globalization is transforming the intellectual, political, and economic landscape that had once defined the fundamentals of the economic role of the nation-state. The bewilderingly pace of change brought about by globalization can be considered by the way the world looked just a mere decade ago, when the precursor to this volume was published (Samuels 1989). The most fundamental propositions about the economic role of government were then premised upon a world that was still divided by the cold war, by geographic isolation, and by nationalistic themes and policies. In the West, debates and controversies about the economic role of government were a way for western democracies to define the contours of the modern welfare state. We were a world of interrelated economies where geographic distance made trade more expensive and complicated. The Internet was not yet up and running, and the source of power of government and business was defined largely in terms of geographic and political territory and nationalistic endowments. Socialism and communism were still sharply pitted against liberalism and capitalism.
